Just when people think that changes on X, formerly known as Twitter, can no longer surprise them, the platform shows another feature that pushes more users away from it. Recently, there have been ads on display that have a different format from the usual X posts and advertisements.
Clickbait Ads on X
X has a rocky past with advertisements, especially when drastic changes caused many clients to take their business elsewhere out of fear of having it adjacent to unmoderated content. Now, it seems the social media site is also showing clickbait ads.
The ad is in a form unlike any other posts on X, given that it has a clickbait caption, an embedded image, and a profile photo similar to the embedded image. It doesn't display a username or the three-dot menu which users can interact with, as per The Verge.
Without the three-dot menu available, users cannot block or report the ads, which does not appear as such since it does not have the ad label that comes with promotion posts. Upon tapping on the photo, users would be redirected to another website.
What even is this @X? On my Following feed, we now just have random posts with no username, not a specified ad, no mechanism to report or engage with…
— Andrew Markowiak (@aMarkzzz) October 2, 2023
This platform has been broken for a while but it feels utterly in shambles these days. pic.twitter.com/doeUjvXq3x
Unlabeled ads actually appeared in X feeds before. In early September, people reported that there have been posts that are obviously ads and can only be identified as such by clicking on the three-dot menu which shows that it is, in fact, a paid promotion.
This resulted in users thinking posts from people they don't follow are showing up on their feeds. The version of the unlabeled ads is now worse since users can't block them, and clicking the image will take them away from the main app.
Upon checking, this format is not available on X's ad campaign manager, which means that it could be a glitch or is being uploaded by a third-party provider. In any case, users are not happy about the addition to the microblogging site.
It Might Get Worse
As if seeing unlabeled ads isn't enough, X users might soon see them as they pay for access to the platform. X owner Elon Musk plans to put the social media site behind a paywall, wherein users will have to provide "a small monthly payment" to keep using it.
The potential monthly subscription comes as another attempt at solving X's bot problem, which has been there even before Musk acquired the company. The tech billionaire did not specify yet how much a "small amount of money" is, as reported by Tech Crunch.
According to Musk, it's the only way he can think of to "combat vast armies of bots." He added that bots cost a fraction or a tenth of a penny, and if creating an account means that users will have to pay every month, then the effective cost of creating bots will skyrocket.
Although the method is not exactly something that users approve of, removing bots on any platform is an important mission. Automated accounts usually send or post spam content to other users, even spreading misinformation in some cases.
